And as a Mets fan, there was one team that personified pure evil: the Philadelphia Phillies. They were everything the Mets weren’t – namely, they were a good team. Every card-carrying Mets fan had nothing but enmity towards them. I mean, c’mon, they’re from Philadelphia, which by itself is a second-class city – especially compared to New York City, which is the greatest city on Earth. But if I must confess, there was one guy I liked on their team, and it was this guy’s injury that began the Phillies decline into Mets-level futility.

Ryan Howard, their all-star first baseman, was that guy I admired. He was a great hitter who put fear into the pitcher’s heart when he stepped up to the batter’s box. I liked him ever since I saw a YouTube video of him touring the White House’s organic gardens and talking about how he became a vegan when he realized he needed to become healthier. I thought, this is one cool and smart athlete, even if he was a Phillie.

And so, my heart went out to Ryan Howard on Oct. 7, 2011, when, during a major league baseball playoff game, he hit a groundball to the infield and starting running to first base, and while running, collapsed in pain, causing him to be helped off the field. It turned out Howard tore his achilles tendon, and didn’t return to play till later the next season. Sadly, ever since that incident, Ryan Howard has been a shadow of his former self.

When the report came in about what happened to Howard, I knew immediately what happened. It has never been reported in the media, but in my heart I was tuned in.

My mind immediately went back to a patient of mine who had seen me earlier in 2011 for acupuncture, the same year of Howard’s achilles tendon rupture. She was a teenage girl and her dad came with her into my office, and as he did so, he pushed her wheelchair into the office and told me her story.

Two months earlier she had a sinus infection and went to her doctor, who prescribed her the popular antibiotic Levaquin, also known as Levofloxacin, which is a member of the fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics, or quinolones for short. Other popular quinolones are Cipro and Avelox.

After taking Levaquin for a short time, she developed muscle pain and weakness throughout her body, culminating in an inability to walk – thus the need for a wheelchair. The girl saw me about half a dozen times, without much improvement. To this day, I do not know what her outcome was.

And on seeing this girl, I recalled a few years earlier, when I first heard about Levaquin from another patient of mine, who on taking it developed muscle pains throughout her body and immediately stopped the drug. She told me Levaquin was dangerous and should be taken off the market.

Indeed, Levaquin, Cipro and all the quinolones should have been taken off the market a long time ago. A half-dozen quinolones have been taken off the market because of unjustifiable risks of adverse effects, but the most popular ones are still around and still available, if your doctor chooses to write the prescription for it, and if you don’t question why you are being given it.

And amazingly enough, in 2010 Levaquin was the best-selling antibiotic in the U.S. I’m sure Johnson & Johnson, who manufacture and sell Levaquin, write off the adverse reactions as collateral damage, and rationalize that whatever lawsuits they have to settle for adverse reactions are the cost of doing business.

Speaking about the quinolones, Mahyar Etminan, a pharmacological epidemiologist at the University of British Columbia, said the drugs were overused “by lazy doctors who are trying to kill a fly with an automatic weapon.”

Dr. Etminan directed a study published in April 2012 in The Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the risk of suffering a potentially blinding retinal detachment was nearly fivefold higher among current users of quinolones, compared with nonusers. In another study he directed, he documented a significantly increased risk of acute kidney failure among users of these drugs.

The most common side effects of the quinolones are muscle and joint pain, and tendon pain and potential rupture. The most common place where the quinolones cause tendon ruptures? The achilles tendon – and that’s why I thought of poor Ryan Howard, whose achilles tendon spontaneously ruptured on Oct. 7, 2011, without any provocation.

Besides its potential damage to the musculoskeletal, visual and renal systems, this class of drugs can also seriously injure the central nervous system (causing “brain fog,” depression, hallucinations and psychotic reactions), the heart, liver, skin (painful, disfiguring rashes and phototoxicity), the gastrointestinal system (nausea and diarrhea), hearing and blood sugar metabolism.

The rising use of these potent drugs has also been blamed for increases in two very serious, hard-to-treat infections: antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (known as MRSA) and severe diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a potentially fatal illness commonly known as C. diff.

The black box warning on Levaquin

A black box warning was finally issued for quinolones in July 2008. A black box warning is the strictest warning put in the labeling of prescription drugs or drug products by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when there is reasonable evidence of an association of a serious hazard with the drug.

And in 2013, the FDA issued an alert about the quinolones and its relationship to neuropathy that said: “This serious nerve damage potentially caused by quinolones may occur soon after these drugs are taken and may be permanent… Peripheral neuropathy is a nerve disorder occurring in the arms or legs. Symptoms include pain, burning, tingling, numbness, weakness, or a change in sensation to light touch, pain or temperature, or the sense of body position. It can occur at any time during treatment with quinolones and can last for months to years after the drug is stopped or be permanent. Patients using quinolones who develop any symptoms of peripheral neuropathy should tell their health care professionals right away.”

And according to the FDA, more than 21 million people get a prescription for a quinolone antibiotic each year. Such drugs are prescribed for sinusitis, urinary tract infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, prostatitis and skin infections. Cipro has been around for decades.

A man by the name of John Fratti, who had horrible adverse reactions to Levaquin, began thoroughly researching the history of the drug, filing a Freedom of Information request with the FDA for Adverse Events information for Levaquin. The FDA’s MedWatch report that he received, titled, “Adverse Event Reporting System, Freedom of Information Report, Selections for: Levofloxacin, Levaquin, From: 01-Nov-1997 to: 20-Jan-2010,” had a disclaimer that the data cannot be used to estimate the incidence of adverse drug reactions.

The report indicated that there were 61,983 reactions reported to the FDA for Levaquin over this period of time, including over 1000 deaths, although this is apparently just a fraction of the actual reactions to Levaquin.

According to a US Government Accounting Office report to Congress, the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System is a voluntary one, and “includes an estimated 1 to 10 percent of adverse events.”

The FDA Report showed reactions that included joint pain, renal failure, insomnia, rhabdomyolysis, tendinitis, tendon rupture, headache, anxiety, pneumonia, vomiting, deafness, suicidal ideation, fibromyalgia, blindness, hallucinations, pancreatitis, diarrhea, leg amputations, foaming at mouth, tinnitus, abnormal liver function, heart attack, aggression, brain death, spontaneous abortion, death and “agonal death struggle” – dying in agony. This is a short list of only 27 reactions out of the total 61,983 reported in the report, which in turn is only “an estimated 1 to 10 percent of adverse events.”

And so, I urge you, as I have during all the articles I’ve written for this series on what a Drugged Out Nation we are here in the U.S., to be very wise and judicious in your use of any medications, and to just say no to taking any of the quinolones, unless you have such a severe medical condition that it is your only choice.

Michael Wayne, Ph.D., L.Ac., is a practitioner of Acupuncture, Chinese Medicine and Integrative Medicine, with offices in Saratoga Springs and Clifton Park. He is also the author of three books, the founder of the Saratoga Integrative Medicine Education Network or SIMEN, the producer/host of the online video interview series Interviews with the Leading Edge at www.LeadingEdgeInterviews.com, and Director of the Center for Quantum Revolution at www.QuantumRevolution.net. His new book, The Quantum Revolution: The Power to Transform, is due out in 2015. He can be reached at (518) 210-1557, his email is mwayne2@mac.com and his website is www.DrMichaelWayne.com.

Michael Wayne

29 Responses

Thank you, Michael, for writing about this topic. It’s a long overdue discussion. What people don’t realize is that these so-called side effects CAN BE PERMANENT. The side effects of ‘quin poisoning are nasty in and of themselves, but sometimes they never go away. Or they progress weeks, months or years after the fact. Or, often the symptoms are mistaken for other chronic conditions. There are many of us floxies (a cute term for people suffering from CiproFLOXacin or LevoFLOXacin poisoning)doing our best to find solutions to a disaster that we never saw coming (hi John Fratti!) because Bayer or Johnson & Johnson are totally not interested in helping those harmed in their quest to make billions from dangerous pharmaceuticals. So please, even if you’ve tolerated ‘quins in the past ask for a safer antibiotic – you never know when you’ll reach your tolerance threshold. And the risk ain’t worth it.

I have been suffering from Levafloxacin toxicity for over a year. I went from a perfectly healthy, athletic, working woman to struggling with damage to all of my connective tissues, crushing fatigue, unable to walk without crutches and now developing autoimmune like conditions. I also personally have met someone almost every week that is damaged by this family of antibiotics. This cannot be rare unless I am meeting the 1% every where I go. It is amazing to me that this is so under recognized by the medical profession. Thank you for writing about this topic. With the amount of prescriptions written each day this is one of the most important medical issues today. Please keep writing.

Thank you for exposing this. I took three pills, they were making me so sick I couldn’t keep down water. After a trip to an Urgent Care for shot of compazine to reduce nausea and being told to keep taking them; I finally got in to see my doctor. He told me to stop taking the Levaquin if it was making me that sick. My blood pressure has not been stable since that day and before I had low blood pressure. The next day, I developed tendinitis in my right Achilles tendon. That pain has never gone away and turned into RSD. I’m now on full disability with a long list of problems, I don’t know which are from these pills and which are from RSD anymore. All I know is my life as I knew it is over, I feel as though I died that day or time stopped for me. I tell everyone I know to not take these drugs. They are dangerous, I’m lucky to be alive if you can call my life living, it’s more like existing.

Thank you for the article on the fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics. As someone who was also harmed, I feel it should be mandatory to warn anyone being prescribed, or treated in a hospital setting. These should only be used in a life or death situation, not randomly given for things that could be treated with something a lot less dangerous. Many people are having their lives dramatically altered and some have even been killed. Since the pharmaceutical industry and doctors aren’t doing what they should to protect us, it is vitally necessary to get the word out by other means, to warn to public. Again, thank you!

Thank you for this article…I hope it will be read by many who will take heed and like you warned not take any Fluoroquinolone antibiotics unless there is no other choice.. I just wish I had been warned …In July 2007 I was given Avelox IV long with steroids for an infection I did not even have…I suffered many severe side effects, but the worst one that has stayed with me to this very day is the 24/7 pain and weakness in legs making walking very difficult…I worry that I will also end up in a wheelchair…. Muscle biopsy showed muscle damage done, and in over 7 years unfortunately I have seen no improvement in my legs, and afraid the damage is permanent…

Within hours of my first Levaquin pill I became one of the victims who’s life would never be the same. I am almost six years out and have come to accept the adverse reactions I still have will probably be permanent. Many of us suffer unrelenting pain and even death. This is not acceptable at any cost. Thank you for helping to bring out the truth about the dangers of fluoroquinolone drugs.

This class of drugs are horrible and numbers of victims don’t lie. As a result of just taking 7 500mg. pills of Ciproflocaxin I have become even more severely disabled with crippling pain every single day from overall tendinosis, peripheral neuropathy, allodynia, multiple chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue, impaired memory and cognitive functioning. I now have $12,000 in medical debt as a result of going to multiple doctors trying to find answers to the continuous bombs going off in my body and have dealt with repeated episodes of doctors ignoring my concerns that the fluoroquinolone did this to me. As a result of the ignorance in the medical field with negative things put in my medical records I have now been denied disability at the hearing level and had to search long and hard to even find a local disability attorney that will take my case. I now face becoming homeless because with my severe pain I cannot leave my house to get a job and don’t have enough money to live on while waiting for the 1-2 year timeframe for the appeal. I am in several Facebook groups with thousands of members suffering from taking fluoroquinolones as well and we all seem to have the same thing in common. Denial by those in the medical profession that the drug did this to us, even for those that acknowledge it they don’t know how to help us, severe crippling pain. Many have lost their job, family, friends, our entire lives, becoming disabled. My life without pain is over but I surely hope that many others can be saved by reading articles such as this.

All of the fluoroquinolone antibiotics are dangerous – Levaquin, Cipro, Avelox, Floxin…. The FDA and the drug manufacturers have known this for decades. These antibiotics have two BLACK BOX warnings and two additional strong warnings were added by the FDA in 2014. An antibiotic that can cause permanent nerve damage – really? Yes really. An antibiotic that can destroy your tendon and ligaments body wide – really? Yes really and permanently too. This one I know first hand. No more sports or anything fun for me, just an inactive life filled with one surgery after another after another to fix torn tendons and joints that don’t work properly because of no tendon/ligament support. Thirteen years and counting thanks to Cipro – and I am young. Educate yourself because doctors either don’t know about these warnings or minimize them – ie. tendon damage just in the elderly. Well, I am far from elderly. These antibiotics are super strong and are only needed in life or death situations not UTIs, ear infections etc. The majority of the time a milder and safer antibiotic like amoxicillin will do the trick. And, these reactions aren’t “rare” and the FDA knows this too. There are thousands of MedWatch reports on these antibiotics. All of the fluoroquinolone antibiotics will RUIN your life. Cipro absolutely destroyed mine. Please be careful and make sure your children never receive one of these antibiotics as well. Know the risks – there are many, they aren’t rare, they affect all ages and they will change your life. Thank you Michael for writing this report on these antibiotics.

I took Levaquin for suspected infection in Oct 2014. After taking the seventh pill I woke up and could not walk. . My PCP that prescribed them was not in her office so the doctor on call returned my call. I explained to her what had happened and her response was “don’t take another pill, they are known to cause tendon ruptures”. Needless to say I did not take another dose. It has been almost 6 months now and I am still a cripple. I am able to walk short distances with a Cam Boot and a cane, but only on my “good” days (those are the days when I don’t have the feeling that I am dying) I can put on my boot, grab my cane and make it to the toilet. I haven’t been able to work since Jan 2015. Somehow I am supposed to go back to work in a couple of weeks. I pray each day that tomorrow I will wake up and be “whole” again. To date I am not.

Thank you, so much Michael for taking the time to write this article. I would like to share with everyone all of the media coverage that has been recently televised. Levaquin is a serious drug with very serious side effects including death. My life has been destroyed by CIPRO AVELOX & LEVAQUIN and NOT one doctor even thought I was having a drug reaction ..they blamed it in my body! Now my body is very broken including my broken eyes.

Fluoroquinolone Antibiotic Toxicity – Recent News Coverage Compilation
March 4, 2015 at 2:47pm
Decades Old Health Concern Receives Recent Recognition – 30 News Reports in 7 Months (several were aired multiple times in different cities throughout the United States & there are more news stories currently in the works).

In October 2012 I developed a septic infection following surgery and was given the antibiotic Levaquin. It saved my life but since then my body has been a ticking time bomb, rendering me disabled. For the first nine months I could barely walk and couldn’t cvanything heavier than a loaf of bread. Levaquin attacked my tendons and muscles. MRIs confirmed tearing in the tendons of my feet. I also developed burning neuropathy in my feet which eventually spread to my entire body. Nerve damage was confirmed by a skin nerve biopsy. Prior to Levaquin I couldn’t tell you what tendinopathy or neuropathy might feel like. Here are the other symptoms Levaquin gave me over the past 29 months:

• Photosensitivity. It was like I became a vampire. I’d go out in the sun for 5 minutes and have severe sunburn.
• Digestive problems. Severe chronic diarrhea, food sensitivities, loss of appetite, malnutrition, and malabsorption. Last year I lost 30 pounds in 5 months. For most this would be great but I am 5’ 4” and was down to 100 pounds.
• Fatty liver and liver detoxification issues. I have a pre-existing rare pancreatic/biliary disorder but prior to Levaquin never had fatty liver show up on a scan. I couldn’t properly metabolize medicines anymore. My whole right side liver area ached.
• Brain fog and cognitive deterioration. Most days I couldn’t even drive. It felt like I was swimming under water or on drugs—but wasn’t.
• Loss of short-term memory. I couldn’t remember a thought I had two seconds ago.
• Vision worsened. I had to update glasses twice.
• Loss of balance. I fell down the stairs several times due to this and muscle weakness.
• Fatigue. I’d go to bed at 7:00 p.m. every night.
• Anxiety. I experienced anxiety and panic attacks but these never stopped. It was terrifying.
• Body wide neuropathic itch. This drove me crazy as it was deep within my body not on my skin.
• Electrical zaps all over. A fellow sufferer called this “the hornets”. It felt like being stung by a thousand hornets all over my body.
• Dizziness, vertigo, lightheadedness.
• Hair loss. I lost clumps of hair and now have bald spots.
• Migraine headaches. They were so bad doctors thought I had meningitis.
• Tinnitus. The ear ringing was so loud it kept me up at night.
• Rapid heart rate. My resting heart rate was always more than 100. If I was “active” it would climb to 165+ within seconds.
• Tooth and gum problems. I went from never needing the dentist to living at the dentist’s office. My once-beautiful teeth are now brittle and overly sensitive. My gums bleed and ache.

ALL FROM AN ANTIBIOTIC! Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. They said it was “idiopathic”, meaning they didn’t know and weren’t going to try and figure it out. Thankfully I took to the Internet and Facebook and met thousands of people all over the world with the same strange afflictions. The one common denominator was we had taken a fluoroquinolone antibiotic.

Though the evidence of fluoroquinolone dangers is all over the Internet, documented in hundreds of National Institutes of Health research studies and articles, and substantiated by FDA black box warnings, almost all of our doctors refused to recognize fluoroquinolones as the cause of our symptoms.

The only effective care I have received has been in the form of natural/alternative remedies from a local naturopath and what I have learned from other sufferers. Learning about my genetic mutations (which many believe are at the root of why some have severe reactions and others none since fluoroquinolones attack DNA) has been instrumental as well. We need awareness since the medical community is doing nothing.

Thank you so much Dr. Wayne for telling the truth about these incredibly dangerous drugs! I live in Ottawa, Ontario, although my nightmare began in the Colorado Rockies where I was given Levaquin for a hospital acquired infection in my ankle. My life has two parts; the part before I took Levaquin when I worked hard and played harder and the part after Levaquin where I live with my sister because I can no longer take care of myself. I knew right away that something was horribly wrong but no one in the medical community took me seriously then and six years later no one has yet despite the fact that I’ve had almost every “symptom” in the product literature. I felt horrible right away and got worse each day until around the tenth day when I lost control of my bladder and by 17 days out I had blood clots in my arm and chest. I also had muscle and joint pain, degenerative discs, headaches, shaking, photo-sensitivity, floaters, double vision, tinnitus, vertigo, nausea, horrible diarrhea, gas, cramps in my stomach, multiple chemical sensitivity, back pain, brain fog, insomnia, depersonalization, anxiety, painful tingling all over my body, pulmonary edema, erratic blood pressure, broken blood vessels, mystery bruises, rashes, bloated veins that needed to be cut from my leg, spontaneous tendon ruptures, mysterious cartilage lesions which required a transplant from a dead child and many other horrible things including cognitive problems that torment me to this day. I’m writing this at 4:00 AM because I can’t sleep. I have had half a dozen operations and expect to have more as my body continues to self-destruct. The last six years have been a miserable trip to hell and maybe halfway back; I still need a cane to get around and I have to take about a dozen different toxic addictive medications every day in order to barely function including morphine, anti-seizure medication, anti-depressants, anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxers, stool softeners, steroid puffers, a pill to keep me from pissing myself and on and on and on. I still think about suicide every day but that’s better than it was; for five years I thought about suicide constantly and begged the Lord to take me. I am slowly trying to get my life back. I will never be able to hold a regular job again but hope someday to be able to support myself as an author and as a coordinator of public policy, helping to implement the massive waves of support that will be needed to take care of the tremendous number of people who have been harmed by these drugs. Millions upon millions of us will need wings of hospitals built to take care of us, research centers, and care centers. The cost of the FLUOROQUINOLONE SCANDAL will be in the trillions of dollars. That is why BIG PHARMA has gone to such great lengths to cover this up, but the cat is out of the bag. This is in the media every few days now and gaining momentum, with newscasts and blog posts and newspaper articles and on and on. Thank you again Dr. Wayne and Times Union for putting together this well researched and well written article! Mark Girard

Thank you each and every one of you who has been willing to share your story in the comments. My heart goes out to all of you, and it breaks my heart to know how you all have suffered at the expense of these horrible drugs that should be taken off the market immediately. It has made me realize that we all know the terrible consequences of war and all the innocent lives that are shattered and destroyed, and that this is also a war: it’s the War on Drugs, except in this case the warmongers are the drug companies (with help from the FDA), and the innocent victims are all of us.

Thank you. I consider myself lucky. I have tendonitis in my ankle and I firmly believe it was from Levaquin that was prescribed for a bad stomach bug. The doc did not test me, just gave me the Rx. I was so sick, I did not question it. After 3 doses my foot blew up. A week later my elbow blew up. I experienced pain in my shoulders and knee as well. Right now the main problem is my ankle. I am on crutches and working towards walking. I think I can get better as some of the sx have gotten better but I will need to be careful for a long time. The ‘carefulness’ annoys me. I take abx maybe once every five years. I am so angry that I did not question the doc for the Rx. I am going to find a new primary doc but for now, I had to put off back surgery which I really needed.
BTW – Philly is no second class city.

Some things to note about fluoroquinolone antibiotics:
1. In 99% of the cases for which they’re used, safer antibiotics are available that SHOULD have been used. So much for “do no harm,” huh?
2. The adverse effects can be permanent.
3. Adverse reactions can be delayed – sometimes for weeks or months
4. There appears to be a tolerance threshold for these drugs – you may be able to tolerate a few pills, but at some point they’ll set off a bomb in the body.
5. They’re topoisomerase interrupters – that means that they disrupt the DNA and RNA replication cycle.
6. They’re chemo drugs.
7. They do serious damage to mitochondria – the energy centers of our cells
8. They do serious damage to GABA neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are important.
9. Symptoms of fluoroquinolone toxicity often looks like autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, fibromyalgia, CFS/ME, chronic lyme disease, etc.
10. There is no known cure for fluoroquinolone toxicity.

This is all a massive ongoing crime against humanity and the executives at Bayer and J$J know exactly what they are doing to us. This is not your ordinary run of the mill BIG PHARMA crime against humanity; no, this crime is an order of magnitudes more heinous and horrific, and more costly in both a human and monetary scale, than any pharmaceutical crime in history. The slime-ball drug peddlers who did this are guilty of murder, and worse, intentionally leaving people alive but horribly damaged, often needing a wide variety of pharmaceutical and other medical supplies for many years to come, or, that is until they finally succumb to the cumulative harm these toxic chemicals have wrought in their ravaged bodies years or decades ahead of when they would have died otherwise. The few of us who have figured out what happened to us may try to avoid products from BIG PHARMA but most of us have no clue what happened to us and those people will usually go right back to BIG PHARMA for help. Most of us heal up, most of the way at least, and may only need a few things from BIG PHARMA, but some of us will need plenty. It takes about a fourth grade education to connect the dots; they did this to us on purpose so we will buy more stuff from them, or the insurance company, or the government, they don’t care, so long as someone comes up with the money. In the typical, routine BIG PHARMA crime against humanity they try to keep selling a drug despite the fact that it causes heart attacks or liver damage or some particular other ailment, which is pretty awful, but nothing like what is going on with us. First, in our case they know the drugs do system-wide damage, and are not only willing to let that happen, as in the crimes and settlements you hear about in the news every week or two; they are in fact counting on it to sell more drugs. Second, they have gone way out of their way to convince doctors that the entire class of poisons is actually the gold standard of safety, and doctors swallow it whole, so when we present to them with every “symptom” in the product literature, and 30 or 40 others to boot, they waste months and even years running tests trying to figure out what the “real” problem is. Eventually we may get misdiagnosed with something that allows us to get financial support of some sort, or maybe we will be left incapacitated with no diagnosis at all and unable to support ourselves, even living on the streets like I was. Third, is the fact that these are some of the most prescribed drugs in the world so hundreds of millions of people have taken them meaning a huge number of people have been damaged. Dr. Flockhart, a leading expert on fluoroquinolones estimates that up to a third of all patients will experience some neuropathy. That is just neuropathy. The product literature lists dozens and dozens of other “symptoms”, many of which are serious, debilitating, and often even life threatening, so who’s to say what percentage of us actually have some sort of medical problems. The number is certainly much higher than the 1% they estimate in the product literature with dubious data from one tiny two month study that had no follow up to see what happened to those people later on. We often don’t have an adverse reaction for months or even years after discontinuation! 99.999% of the victims of fluoroquinolone toxicity have no idea what went wrong in their lives but they are about to find out as the FLUOROQUINOLONE SCANDAL becomes the biggest news story in a very long time.

I am so glad you shared these stories and I hope others will read and take to heart. My life was severly changed forever by a 7 day coarse of antibiotics I was prescribed in 2011 for a UTI. Cipro was not meant to treat such a simple bacterial infection. The Cipro didn’t resolve and left me with peripheral neuropathy along with a host of other conditions I should have never had to be concerned with. Lost career I had been building for over 20 years and more importantly lost a lot of days and weeks with my family that I can’t get back. To me it is ok for a doctor not to know it all, but not ok to take a short cut when it comes to someone’s health or ignore concern.

Cipro has run roughshod over my mental health for the last six months. I have endured depths of fear and confusion I never thought possible because of a drug I didn’t even need. I can see why it causes suicide; the abyssal hopelessness it causes is unbearable. The side effects are not rare, they are not gentle, and they are very, very long-lasting. I hope readers will take notice and recognize these poisons for what they are: brutal, last-resort weapons to be used when all else fails. They are not safe. Oh… and should you fall prey to a quinolone, you’re on your own. Your doctor will not believe you. Take care.

Thank you for your article on the dangers of fluoroquinolones. They destroyed my brother’s life! He has damage from head to toe even 7 years post levaquin. These drugs are dangerous and Big Pharma knows it, yet they have convinced the doctors that they are perfectly safe. Doctors don’t believe you when you present with 75% of the possible side effects listed in the literature and spend months looking for some other reason for your rapid decline in health. Big Pharma needs to be held accountable for the damage they are knowingly causing to thousands of people. They actually have no intention of changing their way of doing things, because each person damaged by these drugs ends up on several other drugs — probably for the rest of their lives!
Don’t take these drugs unless every other option has failed!

These are side effects the way death is a side effect of being hit by a bullet. 10 out of 10 doctors and pharmacists will tell you that they know all about the dangers of these drugs. .. however, the truth is that they don’t. They know what pharma wants them to know. What they don’t know is that these drugs can cause a long term to permanent, sometimes progressive multisystemic disabling syndrome with bodywide tendon damage, cartilage damage, neuropathy, neuromuscular weakness, CNS damage (brain damage) that causes people to lose any semblance of their previous life – unable to work, unable to be physically active and 90% of the time doctors will refuse to believe that this sudden onset syndrome could have been caused by this drug. In fact, in the support groups for fluoroquinolone toxicity we have doctors, dentists, pharmacists and drug reps who have been crippled by these drugs. NONE of them had any idea this could happen and they all have said that if a patient told them this had happened to them, they would not have believed them . . they believe them now. How could they not know this? Cause pharma withholds information about these drugs in order to make more profit – cause they can and have gotten away with the big lie that these are safe when taken as prescribed. The issue is not whether or not these drugs have saved some lives. . . the issue is that there is no full disclosure to prescribers, dispensers or patients about the consequences of what these drugs do to some of the people that take it . . .this is not nausea, upset stomach or temporary discomfort – this is a life sentence to a full blown debilitating syndrome that doctors have NO IDEA about – despite their misplaced confidence that they do – do not expect your doctor to know anything about the true dangers of adverse drug reactions, do not expect them to admit to it, and do not expect them to acknowledge it. Expect them to remain happily in denial in the comfort of their six digit salaries. Thank you, Michael, for writing this article. Victims of these drugs have been shouting about it for over 20 years – there is a documentary film about this (Certain Adverse Events), numerous news stories in various media and even part of the story line to a feature film (The East) features the damage these drugs do directly in it’s plot. AND, still the medical establishment will be the last to own up to these Rx drug induced injuries. Wake up physicians.

I appreciate so much this article! People need to be warned. I was also harmed by Levaquin with a life altering adverse reaction 8 years ago, it left me with a neurological disease that is now severe and permanent; Peripheral Neuropathy, mitochondrial toxicity! I live in pain 24/7 as well as tendon damage. My Doctor at the time choose this horrible antibiotic for an assumed infection when of course another antibiotic would have been so much safer! Levaquin was handed to me as samples with absolutely NO warnings written or spoken, not that there was any black warnings in 2007 anyway. Now my families lives have been changed forever! I went from a full time working mother to a disabled crippled one, who has to rely on a cane, and electric wheelchair for any distance at all.

It’s APPALLING the GREED pharmaceutical companies hold and the HORRIFIC damage they do to their fellow human beings when they pretend to help us! I hope more can be done to expose the TRUTH about Fluoroquinolone Toxicity and stop the harm being done to an enormous amount of people! Lets all keep spreading the word and the truth about these antibiotics!

I’m 37 yo, previously healthy man. On May 2014 my doctor prescribed me ciprofloxacin for suspected UTI. Bacteria was never found from any of the laboratory tests, but my doctor said I should take it to eradicate possible infection. So I did.

After 4 days I started taking these drugs, following symptoms started: burning sensation in arms, legs and lower abdomen, eye pain, eye dryness, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, breathless. I hadn’t experienced any of these symptoms in my life. All doctors I visited, consistently denied ciprofloxacin could cause these symptoms. They told me to rest and relax, what I did.

Couple of days later, my both knees, calves, ankles and heels begun to hurt. Bad. I was suddenly unable to drive or walk more than few hundred meters. I was petrified. I did my research and found out that there was hundreds of people suffering the same way as I do after taking these same antibiotics!

Over 11 MONTHS have now passed and I was just diagnosed with antibiotic induced tibialis posterior tendinitis. I’m still unable to take prolonged walks with our dogs or exercise my legs, because it aggravates the ankle pain. There is nothing that can be done except waiting and hoping.

Taking this poison was the biggest regret of my life.

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